Today’s post, brought to you by a Depeche Mode song (again), is about time.
Big surprise. I’m still behind on the novel. Like, way behind. Not worried yet, as when I’ve taken the time (this will be a recurring theme) to write, I’ve made decent progress. It’s just a matter of actually taking that time to get down to the writing business that’s piling up to a lack of productivity.
It doesn’t help that when I plan to spend a decent chunk attempting to pound out some words, something gets in the way. Take today for instance. My son, after last night complaining of stomach pain, woke up doubled over, and he didn’t go to school. On a normal day, this might not be such a big deal, but I had dental surgery this morning, too. (Long story short {too late}, I have a gap in my teeth, and after getting braces to straighten the ones that remained, I got an implant that will eventually anchor a crown once it’s healed.) Luckily, I have in-laws who watched him on short notice. In fact, once school was off the table, it hardly seemed like he was all that sick after all (though he did mention his stomach pain occasionally throughout the day).
That enough didn’t have to be too much of a distraction from the afternoon I planned to work on my novel. But there was something else that got in the way, something that got delayed because I wanted to wait until after my upper lip and gums weren’t numb anymore to eat lunch. You see, today marked the premiere of the 3rd Season of Star Trek: Picard, and there was nothing that was going to keep me from watching it this afternoon (at least, beyond the things I’ve already stated). I won’t give any spoilers, although I will say that I was moved to tears of joy at many points throughout the episode. And that left me somewhat drained.
Then my daughter’s bus didn’t show up, so I had to go get her. And I found that the motivation wasn’t heavy for doing much of anything in the writing world. I still got a little on the page, but that isn’t adding up to much overall still.
My kids have a snow day tomorrow. There was already going to be midwinter break on Monday and Tuesday. That means 5 long days of unlikely ability to do much, when I really wanted to focus a large part of tomorrow on the novel to get at least somewhat caught up. Obviously, I’ll find at least some time to write, but with various activities on the books, some shifted into the afternoon tomorrow because we have that ability, it’s going to be difficult.
It looks like I’ll be filling a lot of the end of the month with a lot of writing again. That’s okay. I should be able to make it work. But I keep hoping I won’t end up doing that all the time. And this month I have a particular reason to not want to leave too much for the last day: on Tuesdays (which the 28th will be), my local movie theater does really cheap tickets to almost all of the movies out there. Next Friday sees the release of Cocaine Bear, which will probably be insane, but for $4, I want to see it on the big screen. I won’t want to wait an additional week if I can help it. Therefore, I’m using it as my motivation to not leave too much until the end.
Because I’m stubborn enough to work my butt off in the last few days no matter how far behind I am. I just don’t want to do that again. I know I’ve said it before, including after last month. We’ll see if next Thursday’s post if I have made significant progress into eliminating this deficit by any demonstrable margin. Until then, stay productive, but overall, know yourself, and know when you need to do something that fulfills you, even if it means reading a lot, watching episodes of shows both new and old, or hyping yourself up for drug-addled wild animals.